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Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

omgubuntu.co.uk

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Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#41

Post by aeyes »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #18
aeyes wrote: post #15

This week I tried Wayland with Nvidia again on Arch and it was terrible, I experienced lag, bad performance and weird glitches like a jumping cursor. I admit that I only played with this for an hour or so. Maybe I didn't do some of the necessary configs to get a good experience, I just followed the Arch wiki instructions. I hope it's better on Ubuntu.

Which card and desktop environment? The only bug I still experience is occasional desktop flickering. TBH Archlinux and NixOS have the easiest Nvidia experience because IIRC I think Ubuntu still defaults to Nouveau?

RTX 3070 on Plasma with the latest Nvidia driver. Things are probably better with AMD.

I used Arch for 2 years and Fedora for about a year. I just can't handle Linux as a daily driver anymore, I don't really want to deal with all the little annoyances anymore. Every couple of months I come back to see if things are improving.

I have zero issues with Windows. I don't do much dev work on this machine and when I do a VM is good enough for me.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#42

Post by xyst »

nine_k wrote: post #40
xyst wrote: post #39

Are there any good Linux desktop communities y’all recommend joining? I want to setup a passwordless workflow with a Linux desktop environment, but I’m honestly lost between “Wayland” vs “wlroots” vs “X”. I only understand that Wayland is the preferred “display server” and “X” only exists for legacy. And this is only the display server. I have not even delved into the other components. Right now, I have setup a basic…

PAM was invented for scenarios like that. AFAICT logind uses PAM no matter what graphics server are you running. So this likely works under Wayland and X equally, provided the right yubikey: https://adl1995.github.io/passwordless-logins-with-yubikey.h...

Oh thanks for sharing, this seems promising. I’ll look into this.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#43

Post by porphyra »

xyst wrote: post #39

Are there any good Linux desktop communities y’all recommend joining? I want to setup a passwordless workflow with a Linux desktop environment, but I’m honestly lost between “Wayland” vs “wlroots” vs “X”. I only understand that Wayland is the preferred “display server” and “X” only exists for legacy. And this is only the display server. I have not even delved into the other components. Right now, I have setup a basic…

fyi wlroots is an implementation of Wayland.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#44

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

nolongerthere wrote: post #27

Can anyone explain how Wayland and X(?) relate to Linux? Like what’s the windows equivalent? I’ve used Ubuntu desktop a few times, I keep liveUSB versions of mint, Suse, and Ubuntu on my ventoy, but I just don’t understand what the deal is with the constant discussion of Wayland and X…

Windows includes both display hardware handling functionality and a GUI framework to run on top of it. All of that is part of the OS that Microsoft provides

A Linux system is assembled from several parts that aren't all that related to each other beyond the API interfaces exposed/used

The Linux kernel brings a lot of core OS functionality, including display hardware handling, and a framework to expand that with hardware-specific drivers

The kernel does not bring a GUI framework. That has to come separately. X and Wayland are both approaches to filling that gap on Linux systems

X is basically how GUIs have worked on most Linux/Unix systems for the last few decades. There's some weird cruft from the assumptions used when the X framework was designed

Wayland is trying to get rid of the cruft and align better to how computers are used today. But it has to fight against X's inertia, and it's been a long road to Wayland being "daily driver" usable

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#45

Post by roenxi »

xyst wrote: post #39

Are there any good Linux desktop communities y’all recommend joining? I want to setup a passwordless workflow with a Linux desktop environment, but I’m honestly lost between “Wayland” vs “wlroots” vs “X”. I only understand that Wayland is the preferred “display server” and “X” only exists for legacy. And this is only the display server. I have not even delved into the other components. Right now, I have setup a basic…

> Are there any good Linux desktop communities y’all recommend joining?

I don't know of any (phoronix.com, maybe? it slants more towards hardware enthusiasts than desktops so probably not, but it tends to be interested in things like drivers), and I'd be surprised if they existed for the interesting parts of the graphics stack. In the old times (2010) X was the only option and it handled display. There has been a huge push since AMD got serious about open source graphics to redesign the graphics subsystem to be more linux-y by transforming it into something a bit more like a Jenga tower of components stapled together (wayland is one of them) that coordinate to replace X.

The coordinating body seems to be freedesktop.org but it takes a lot of investigating to figure out what it is they are doing at any given time. It happens very slowly though so knowledge picked up can stay current for a decade or more.

The new component based world has a couple of key nodes where the work happens - the kernel (DRM subsystem specifically) for drivers, freedesktop.org for technical compatibility coordination, mesa3d.org for the heavy lifting libraries, Red Hat for pipewire that picks up the slack that Wayland fumbled, then the morass of compositers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_display_servers#Waylan...) that are the user-facing part and where most people will interact with all this. They all have their own communities but IMO it is unclear which will take the lead outside the majors like KDE and Gnome. swaywm so far but I don't think it has a community anywhere as such.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#46

Post by simoncion »

elliotto wrote: post #32
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #30

As an end user, is there any immediate usability gains to be had with Wayland today? I understand X is old and crufty, but if I embraced the switch do I gain anything? Or more it sets the stage for future improvements kind of thing?

I had a nightmare trying to get a 4 x 4k monitor setup using Xorg. When I switched to Wayland, basically all my problems were solved and it worked out of the box. The Xorg multiple monitor support is really bad and barely works if you are trying to do anything complex with it. If that's not a problem you have then great! But most people today are using multiple monitors.

> If that's not a problem you have then great! But most people today are using multiple monitors.

Just out of curiosity, what was complex about your quad 4k monitor configuration? As a lark, I've used xrandr to do all sorts of weird stuff and it has handled it just fine.

I've been using multiple monitors with xorg for fifteen, twenty years. (For quite a while, I used three monitors, but now I just have two.) Until XRandR became a thing, configuring them was definitely a headache, but after its release, everything Just Works(TM).

On my laptops, I've always used Intel hardware, and on my desktop, I've always used ATi/AMD hardware. Are you -perhaps- using nVidia hardware? If you are, that may be the source of your problems... nVidia's Linux support for the little things that make using a graphical desktop not tear-your-hair-out bad has always been pretty awful. (Usually because they typically refuse to do what everyone else does and go off and make an incompatible version that's generally worse.)

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#47

Post by mixmastamyk »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #30

As an end user, is there any immediate usability gains to be had with Wayland today? I understand X is old and crufty, but if I embraced the switch do I gain anything? Or more it sets the stage for future improvements kind of thing?

If you've ever noticed a horizontal update line going down your screen when moving a window fast or playing a video, wayland can eliminate that.

There's also better security between applications, in case one is hostile. However this can lead to reduced functionality.

All in all not that big a deal for most people. I'm partly interested in keeping important components of the OS well supported.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#48

Post by simoncion »

fyrn_ wrote: post #26
jsdavo wrote: post #19

Wayland breaks the GlobalProtect™ VPN client. Quite annoying.

To be fair Even on MacOS (presumably bigger market for them) a strong breeze breaks GlobalProtect™

Perhaps IT at $DAYJOB has pinned to one of the few good versions of GlobalProtect™, but the only trouble I've had with it on my work-issued Mac (and this is a recent trouble) was it refusing to pop up the dialog to enter two-factor creds.

Granted, this is a right pain in the ass, because you have to restart the fucking GlobalProtect™ service to flush out the bug... but otherwise, it has been fine for years and years.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#49

Post by bramhaag »

xyst wrote: post #39

Are there any good Linux desktop communities y’all recommend joining? I want to setup a passwordless workflow with a Linux desktop environment, but I’m honestly lost between “Wayland” vs “wlroots” vs “X”. I only understand that Wayland is the preferred “display server” and “X” only exists for legacy. And this is only the display server. I have not even delved into the other components. Right now, I have setup a basic…

The Arch wiki is really good for things like this, and is hardly Arch specific (other than package names).

Searching "YubiKey" brings me here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/YubiKey#Linux_user_authenti.... It seems to describe your exact use case.

Of course it has a lot of info about Wayland vs. X too, etc.

Re: Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for Nvidia Users

#50

Post by simoncion »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #44
nolongerthere wrote: post #27

Can anyone explain how Wayland and X(?) relate to Linux? Like what’s the windows equivalent? I’ve used Ubuntu desktop a few times, I keep liveUSB versions of mint, Suse, and Ubuntu on my ventoy, but I just don’t understand what the deal is with the constant discussion of Wayland and X…

Windows includes both display hardware handling functionality and a GUI framework to run on top of it. All of that is part of the OS that Microsoft provides A Linux system is assembled from several parts that aren't all that related to each other beyond the API interfaces exposed/used The Linux kernel brings a lot of core OS functionality, including display hardware handling, and a framework to expand that with hardw…

> ...it's been a long road to Wayland being "daily driver" usable

Fifteen years and counting! If my math is right, it's older now than XFree86 was when Xorg was forked from it, and ~six months younger than XFree86 was when xorg got XRandR and input hotplugging support.

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